


As Fast As She Can

by torigates



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2013-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 14:42:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/980118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torigates/pseuds/torigates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I know that you’re tired of waiting, and you may have to wait a little more, but she’s on her way, Ted. And she’s getting here as fast as she can.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Fast As She Can

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally written in 2009 and as such is not entirely canon compliant. With the premier on Monday, I found myself with a renewed influx of Mother feelings, and I wanted to revisit this. It remains one of my favourite pieces I have ever written.

Till now your life has been uneventful. No, not uneventful. Uneventful implies that nothing has happened to you. 

Many things have happened to you. You went to school, went to work, went out with your friends, went out with your family, went out with boys, went to parties, stayed home, stayed in, had a few drinks, had a few too many, had a hangover, had sex, had a life. A good life. And maybe it’s not the kind of life that gets written about in books or movies, but you’re okay with that. Because you’re happy.

You’re twenty-six years old and in a moment of clarity you realise, _Hey, I’m kind of awesome._

And you are. You are awesome.

Everything seems so clear in that moment, and you believe, you really believe that things are about choices. The choices you make, what you do, who you do it with—it’s all leading to something.

All your choices, every minor and insignificant moment leading you to this place in your life, and everything makes sense. 

Of course things don’t stay so clear. They never do. 

Then two of your friends get married and three people you know have babies and your cousin, your aunt, your co-worker and your mom all ask you why you don’t have a boyfriend and when you’re going to settle down, _You’re a very beautiful girl, you could have your pick at anyone you wanted._ and suddenly things seem a lot more complicated. 

It’s not that you don’t want to settle down, it’s just that you don’t want to settle down _yet_. You don’t get what the big hurry is. You want to live. You want to experience things. You want to do something amazing. You don’t want to rush through life and miss something great.

So you carry on living your life the only way you know how, and sometimes it’s wonderful and sometimes it’s horrible. Some days you feel like everything is coming together, and some days you feel like everything is falling apart. Sometimes you wake up smiling and you laugh so hard your sides hurt, sometimes you wake up and all you want to do is cry. Sometimes you feel so lonely you believe it’s going to stay that way the rest of your life.

Till now your life has been ordinary. Not bad, not boring—just ordinary. And you start to worry—you start to _believe_ that your whole life is going to be ordinary. You want more. You deserve more. You’re just not sure where to look. 

You have good friends, a good family and a job you can enjoy well enough (even if you don’t love it). Your boyfriend is a good man. He hugs, kisses and fucks you so good it’s almost perfect. Almost. It should be perfect, you tell yourself it is perfect because you love him, you do, but it’s not. It’s not perfect. Something is missing. 

You wonder if there’s something wrong with you that you’re not happy. You wonder if there’s something wrong with him. You wonder if there’s something wrong with love. You wonder if there’s something wrong, period. 

The problem, it turns out, is not with you or him or love. The problem is not with any one thing, it’s everything. You wake up one morning and realise the problem is you don’t love him anymore. And it would be easy to say that you did the right thing and ended it then and there. It would be easy to say that you did the right thing, but you didn’t. You were scared and lonely and comfortable and you let it drag on longer than you should.

One night he turns to you. “Where do you want to be in five years?” he asks. 

You cringe, wondering _Is this high school?_ “I don’t know,” you say honestly. You don’t know where you want to be in five years, and it’s terrifying. 

“Do you want to be with me?” he asks you. 

It would be easy to tell him that you do. It would be easy to convince him that you want to be together, that you should be together, and it would be easy to believe it yourself. At least for a little while. But you don’t, so you can’t, and you cry and he cries and it’s all a horrible mess. 

It’s devastating. Not the loss of him specifically, but the _loss_ of the person who was always there, and for a while it’s hard to get up in the morning. 

Strangely, life goes on.

You do wake up in the morning, go to work, go for lunch, go out with friends, go out with boys, and for a while you even go to the gym (that doesn’t last long). You have a few drinks, have sex, have a good time, and after a little while longer things seem to be better. A lot better.

You’re twenty seven years old and you think, _I don’t need a boy, I’m awesome._

And you are. You are awesome. 

Of course, it doesn’t seem that way when your friends are going on dates or off living their married lives, and you start to forget that moment of clarity. You start wonder, _When’s my turn?_

Still, you’re not in any rush. You tell yourself you’re not in any rush, and you putting dating and marriage and kids in the background and try to live your life the best you can. 

You work a few jobs you sort of like and a lot of jobs you hate before you realise that you still don’t know what the hell you want to do with your life. All you know is that it’s not what you’re doing right now. You allowed yourself to drift because it was comforting. It was easy. But you can’t. You can’t keep living like this. You won’t let yourself.

You spend a lot of time thinking, a lot of time researching, a lot of time crying and a lot of time talking on the phone with your mom before you know what to do. 

Your decision to go back to school, to start up where you left off five years earlier is the most terrifying choice you’ve ever had to make. And all you can do is hope and pray and beg and plead and sweat and cry and hope it turns out for the best. 

And it will. It does. 

You don’t know it yet, but everything up until now has been leading you here. To this moment in your life where you are awesome, you are. If you hadn’t decided to put off getting married, if you hadn’t ended a million different relationships, if you hadn’t quit your job and made this choice to go back to Columbia, if you hadn’t taken the architecture class on a whim then you wouldn’t have ended up where you are. 

If you hadn’t taken the chance none of this would have happened. If you hadn’t taken the leap you wouldn’t have met him.

You wouldn’t have met Ted.


End file.
